Buyer's guide - Printers

Versatile printers the whole family can use

No need to take up an entire room with your computer equipment; a desk is big enough for your PC and a multifunction inkjet or laser printer! Compact, functional and efficient, A multifunction printer is compact, functional and efficient, and makes photocopying, scanning, printing and faxing a breeze. You don’t even have to turn on your computer to use it! Multifunction printers are discreet as they are effective, and are capable of very precise scanning and photo-quality printing in just a few seconds! If you’re often in a hurry, you’ll want a high-speed printer. To avoid waiting around impatiently for your documents to print out, opt for a printer that prints at least 20 pages a minute minimum. Some printers are WiFi-compatible, which is highly convenient for laptop users; you can print everywhere you go! Some multifunction printers have memory card readers so you won’t even need to go through your computer to print your photos! This type of printer has several paper trays for different formats, as well as a screen that can help you to retouch your photos. Remember to check the compatibility of the card reader with your type of memory card (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro and xD for the most part). If you share your computer with little ones who click all over the place, then save trees (and money) by choosing a printer with access control. This will let you decide who has access to the printer and whether they can print in black and white or in colour.

Professional printing

If you’re an entrepreneur and print on tons of paper every year -- mostly in black and white -- it's time to stop! Inkjet printers aren’t made for such intensive use; laser printers are much more efficient and cost-effective for professional use. Laser printers are a high-speed, high-volume printing solution for consistent quality and reliability in both colour and black & white; for even higher speeds, you can connect your printer to your company’s Ethernet network. Laser printers can handle simultaneous requests very easily, so there's no need to invest in a printer per employee. To keep the noise in your work environment to a minimum, choose a printer with a low noise level when in operation and stand-by mode. Save trees and money with a duplex printer; by printing on both sides of a page, your files will be slimmer and your costs will be cut right down. To keep costs to a minimum, choose your printer’s toner cartridge wisely. When printing large quantities in colour, opt for separate colour cartridges, which allow you to change empty cartridges separately and thus limit waste. Laser printers aren’t just for businesses; they’re affordable and provide high-quality colour, black & white and photo printing at an unbeatable price.

A photo lab at home

Photographers can show off their creativity with a 10x15 cm photo printer! These compact and easy-to-use printers allow you to print and share your pictures just minutes after taking them. You can even use the printer’s screen to reframe your shot so that it’s picture perfect! Make sure your printer has a memory card reader or PictBridge protocol. This allows you to print your images directly from your digital camera without having to connect to a computer. If you don’t want to limit your printing options to 4"x6" format, inkjet photo printers print in a wide variety of sizes, including A4, banners, landscape format and more…. Inkjet and dye-sublimation printers are bigger but just as high-quality as 10x15 cm printers, and can be used without a computer – just edit your photos on the integrated screen and then print in any size you wish! To get an image worthy of a photo lab, use special photo paper and a photo printing system (which uses 6 cartridges or a special photo cartridge). You’ll get vivid, realistic results every time!

Ink

Whether it takes cartridges or toner, your printer needs ink -- but not just any ink! You’ll be able to find inks that are compatible with your printer for less than brand-name inks, but they're often lacking in quality. Some printers even recognise ink cartridges and are incompatible with lesser-quality inks. When you're printing photos, don’t scrimp on the quality of the ink or that of the cartridge. Choose separate colour cartridges instead of single cartridges that hold several colours. By having separate cartridges, you’ll be able to change them individually, saving you from throwing a whole block away simply because one colour is running low. If you don’t use your inkjet printer very often, you might find that the cartridge has clogged because the ink has dried. To avoid this, choose a cartridge with a built-in printing head. They're a little more expensive, but a lot more environmentally friendly. They also end up saving on ink: a lot of ink tends to be consumed when cleaning the cartridge head, because the ink is forced through the cartridges's nozzle to unclog it. Toner is a fine powder and is more commonly used in the business world. It often comes in larger cartridges and has a long lifespan. A cartridge of toner costs more than an ink cartridge, but costs less in the long run because the quantity of ink is better controlled and the cartridge head doesn't need to be cleaned.

Paper

Just as essential as ink, the paperyou choose determines the quality of printing results, especially when it comes to photos. Paper comes in every size imaginable and in a wide range of textures. The smoother the paper, the better the end result. Coated paper produces better results than standard printing paper. It's essential to use special paper when you're printing photos. Photo paper possesses certain qualities, including surface gloss, smoothness and ink absorbency, which will give you snapshots worthy of a photo lab. Different weights are available, depending on the quality of picture you want – if you’re printing a few images surrounded by text, 75g/m² paper will suffice. However, if you’re printing high-definition photos, you’ll need paper of at least 180 g/m². But don’t go overboard - heavy papers don’t make for beautiful pictures! Paper weighing over 280 g/m² is too thick for printing photos. Choose quality above all else and try sheen, matte, coated, satin or glossy paper to see which you like best! See all consumables

Scanners

If you need to print top-notch photos but also need to scan documents, you might want to rethink your choice of a multifunction printer. They might be convenient, but they aren’t yet designed to produce the highest-quality photos. Go for a photo printer and a separate scanner instead. Slim and compact, scanners take up little space and provide great results – some can even digitalise your printed photos, preserving their quality. A scanner with a resolution of 150 to 300 dpi (dots per inch) is perfect for this kind of job. If your printer isn’t hooked up to a phone line, you can also get a fax machine to send your documents quickly.

Different types of printers

These days, the most widespread technology is inkjet printing. To produce an image, inkjet printers project droplets of ink onto paper through a print head made up of several hundred (to several thousand) tiny nozzles. The only inconvenience is that the spouts in these tiny nozzles can be clogged with dried ink when the printer isn’t used regularly. The print head then requires cleaning which, as we stated before, can be quite costly. Inkjet technology is used in multifunction and photo printers and is great value for money. If you’ll mostly be printing photos, dye-sublimation technology is your best choice. Sublimation is when a substance -- in this case ink-- transforms from a solid to a gas state without going through the liquid stage. Dye-sublimation printers use heated print heads to turn solid, dry ink (stored on a cellophane ribbon) into gas. As it hits the paper, the ink cools and forms a dot of varying colour, depending on the amount of heat applied. Laser technology, mainly destined for the business world, uses a powdered ink called toner. This printing system is inexpensive and efficient, and is perfectly suited to office use. On top of being precise and using minimal amounts of ink, this complex printing method produces long-lasting results.

Quality you need

When adjusting your printer’s settings, remember that the resolution and the printing speed invariably depend on one another. By this, understand that high resolution decreases printing speed and fast printing decreases resolution quality. Resolution -- the precision in which something is printed -- is measured in dots per inch (dpi), a measure of the density of the number of individual dots that can be placed within the span of one linear inch. Of course, the higher the dpi, the clearer the image and the more well-defined the contours will be. Dye-sublimation printers can be programmed to print 300x300 dpi and give results that resemble a 1200x4800 dpi inkjet printer. Adjusted to the same resolution, laser printers provide even better results than inkjet printers because they produce dots that are much smaller and therefore much more precise. The speed of a printer is measured in pages per minute (or ppm for short), and is used mainly as a marketing tool. The term pages per minute generally refers to simple, sparse black and white office documents and not denser colour documents, which isn’t very representative of the machine’s performance abilities. To the printing speed, you should add the time it takes to process a page, which depends on the strength of the processorand the printer’s memory capacity. You should also factor in the quality of the page (rough draft, normal, optimal, economic) you want to print. The higher the memory capacity, the more information you’ll be able to store, thus increasing the processing and printing speeds. This is especially useful when printing high-resolution photos that take up a lot of memory. You can also add extra memory to your printer to improve its processing speed.

Things to consider

To choose the printer that best suits you, take all the information above into account and decide how much you want to spend. Printing with a photo printer can be more expensive than sending your pictures off to a photo lab, which often uses a sliding scale depending on how many pictures you want to get printed. Between ink and special paper, home printing can cost about 20p per photo, and even more if you use a dye-sublimation printer. A10x15cm printer is easy to take with you and can print out your photos straight after you’ve taken them, which can come in quite handy at family gatherings. Laser printers are sturdy and have the cheapest cost-per-page (around 10p for colour and less for black and white). They allow for large quantities to be printed quickly and cheaply, making them the most common printers in office buildings.

More options

Printers can do more than hook up to USB or parallel port peripherals. If your camera and printer are PictBridge compatible, you can edit and print your photos without ever needing to use computer. Printers with Ethernet or Wifi connections are great for the office because they can be hooked up to several computers at once, and can even continue printing when these computers are switched off! A printer with a Bluetooth connection can communicate with other compatible peripherals, such as your mobile phone for example. Shoot, print and admire your photos in total freedom! Note that cables are not usually included when you buy a printer, so you’ll have to pick up the ones you require separately.